


Almost You

by freelancejouster



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Car Accident mention, Fear, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Road Trips, Spooky, Trope: Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts, Unsettling, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:41:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23552464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freelancejouster/pseuds/freelancejouster
Summary: Johnny waits, not sure how long was long enough.  It is probably just something he has tofeelbut he’s never been very good at that.  He stares at the weird, flickering lights of the pumps until he starts to get a headache and specifically does not look at whatever might be entering his car, and then closes the passenger door.He needs a rider if he's going to make this drive.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 14
Kudos: 91
Collections: NCT Spookfest Spring Scream





	Almost You

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this tumblr post](https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/167937455558/something-i-thought-youd-find-interesting-awhile), the prompt trope "Beware of hitchhiking ghosts", and Hozier's "Like Real People Do". Title from Hozier's "Almost (Sweet Music)"
> 
> Big thanks to chan/nonelasagna for the regular reasons.
> 
> Note: I do want to preface this with the information that Mark is a ghost who describes how he dies. It's not graphic, but is there. If that content will upset or otherwise bother you, please don't read! Stay safe!

The world stretches dark and flat away from the circle of Johnny’s headlights. A poorly kept road in front of him, lights from some distant town or village off somewhere in the distance, but the rest of it just — dark. It’s as though the world has dwindled down to himself, his car, and the stretch of road suspended in his headlights.

There’s something immeasurably lonely about nighttime driving, especially anywhere outside of a city’s limits. He always forgets how vast the world is, how much it stretches on and on away from him in the daytime, but in the night there’s nothing else to focus on, nothing else to distract him from it. 

He can focus on the road, sure, but when that’s the only thing you’ve been doing for hours, now, well — the mind wanders.

It feels almost —

He turns his music down a little bit. He’s been listening to the radio as loudly as he could stand to for the last hour or so, for _something_ to occupy his mind enough to keep him awake, the heavy downbeats catching on his teeth and vibrating his knuckles, but even that was getting a little monotonous. And there’s a point where maybe he shouldn’t be trying to occupy himself, anyway — maybe it does more harm than good to be paying attention to something besides the road to stay awake.

He’s got his high beams on, but it still feels like his headlights don’t reach very far. Part of him thinks that they should reach further. They do a bit to lighten his way and without them he’d be wholly, completely adrift — but he can’t shake the feeling that the darkness is permeating the light rather than the other way around.

Johnny presses his lips together and then ends up suppressing a wide yawn. He should have left his house earlier, but there’s not a lot he can do about that now. The digital clock rolls past midnight, its luminous red glow brighter than it really needed to be, shading everything in the console a hazy neon.

He doesn’t — mind a drive, not usually, but he’s tired and the world feels like a distinct and separate thing from himself and he can’t help but wonder if he shouldn’t have just waited until morning to do it. Gotten up with the sun.

The concept feels — safer, but distant. Like a dream he might have once had.

The world, Johnny knows, is not terribly kind of people who express doubts or reservations of any kind, and for that reason, among whatever other reasons there may have been, it begins to snow.

He hardly notices it at first. For the first five minutes or so it’s just odd, slightly disconcerting wisps at the edges of his headlights, blurring the space in front of him just enough to grow uneasy. But ten minutes later and he’s slowed to thirty, the world in front of him white and featureless altogether, wet snow churning and crunching beneath his tires, and the main indication that he _was_ traveling on the road appropriately were the little reflective markers staggered diligently every tenth of a mile.

He wasn’t from places where driving in snow was a problem, but driving in snow like _this_ was a different story altogether. Driving in snow like _this_ was for the foolish, rather than the local. For the people with a death wish rather than the brave.

A glance at the clock tells him that it’s not going to be any faster to turn around, however, so, stomach tense and ever so slightly nauseous, he keeps going.

Johnny doesn’t mind a drive, sure, but he’s not sure he knows anyone who _likes_ driving in the snow at night. It’s not — safe, as a first problem. He feels his car slide much more often than he’s comfortable with, slick bits of road surprising him where he wishes they wouldn’t. And a second, it’s unfamiliar.

Johnny’s driven down this highway a dozen times or more in the last year or so, but in the snow it’s a completely different place. A bend surprises him, looming out of nowhere, and he only makes it around the corner by virtue of already having slowed to a crawl. He swallows hard and thanks whatever comes to mind that he’s as good a driver as he is, hands gripped tight on the steering wheel, all his limbs tense and ready.

It’s only when he pulls into the buzzing, half-dilapidated gas station thirty miles up the road that he’s both _sure_ he’s still on the right road and that he lets himself relax again. It’s — 

It’s a weighty feeling, to realize your entire body has been tensed for a half an hour. He’s not in bad shape, especially after the last few months where he’d really committed to doing home workouts when he couldn’t pull himself to the gym, but there’s an _ache_ in his thighs and in his arms that hurts worse than most workouts do. Fight and flight both digging themselves into his limbs.

He takes a long couple of minutes to dig his thumbs into the muscle of his own thigh, trying to find the places that had been too tense and try and rub the strain from it. It’s painful, but he knows that it’ll help at least a little.

The snow keeps falling, thick and icy and bitterly cold. It turns everything the worst sort of white — unnatural and harsh. Unforgiving in the way it encompasses anything. Johnny watches it come down and it’s hard to muster any kind of emotion besides dread.

He rubs a hand down his face. There’s a chill in the air that has nothing to do with the snow.

Growing up, there had been a couple car rides that ended up like this. Sure, the weather was terrible but it wasn’t unheard of. He was supposed to have been sleeping in the back seat, but he’d always been one of those children who woke up when arriving anywhere. He knew — he pressed his lips together, dreading the decision, but he knew what he had to do.

Despite that, there’s nothing quite like the anxiety of doing something that you know in your bones you’re not supposed to. Johnny felt — shaky, like his movements weren’t his own. Cold. The thick gray sweatshirt he’d thought to wear didn’t do much against the harsh bite of the wind as he exited the car to pump his gas.

Johnny had heard the stories about people who accidentally transport spirits, how they end up with crashed cars in the middle of cornfields, far further out than any reasonable person would drive off of the road. Car wedged deep into the earth like it had been flung there.

And he’d heard about those other stories, the ghosts that looked like beautiful women on the side of the road, who’d died in an accident or something — he wasn’t — he knew the stories, but the lore was always different. Sometimes she’d been killed on the road, sometimes she’d done the killing and was bound to the road because of it.

It was probably lonely, Johnny figured, to spend a lifetime watching people whiz past you, in and out of the space you occupy so quickly as to never be there at all.

It’s not — safe, this thing he knows he has to do. He shouldn’t do it.

But he half-remembers that he’s seen it done before and he’s almost certain he won’t make it to Marion without something’s help, he doesn’t have the sort of money that he can just blow it on a hotel room, and it might even be less safe to park right here at the gas station and sleep this feeling off.

He knows most people around here keep something in their passenger seat, just in case. It’s where their purse goes or their backpack, or if they’re the sort of person who travels very lightly, they’ll throw a snack or something into it. A bag of jerky for later or an energy drink or something. If they’re sentimental maybe a plant. If they’re travelling heavy, a box is as good as anything else. Never a doll or a toy.

It’s dangerous to travel with space for something else, everyone knows that — and dolls can get inhabited faster than most things. It’s something about the space behind the eyes.

Like it’s waiting to be filled up.

When he takes his backpack out of the seat, Johnny _feels_ like he’s doing something wrong, like he knows better than this — but that’s mostly because he’s never tried to take a rider on purpose.

A space left open on accident is much more dangerous than one left open on purpose, everyone knows that. He’ll be fine — he’ll be _fine_ ; he just needs to make it to Marion and it’ll be _fine_. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

Maybe if he thinks it more times, he’ll start to believe it.

He swallows hard, goes into the gas station to pay and pee and get a water bottle and a cup of cheap cappuccino from the machine, and when he gets back to the car he opens the passenger door and waits.

Wind whips against his face so hard that his nose and ears feel a bit like they’re stinging, but Johnny leans gingerly against the trunk next to the open door anyway.

“I need your help,” he says quietly. “You don’t want to be here, so I’ll take you as far as Marion, if you keep me awake and do not harm me.” He presses his lips together. That’s all he really needs to say, he’s pretty sure, but it also feels like he _should_ say more. Give whoever’s listening a selling point or something. He clears his throat awkwardly. “Marion is much nicer than here,” he offers. “— In that most places are nicer than here, but I’m particularly fond of the 24-hour Japanese place near the park. I’ll drive you, but you have to get out there — deal?”

Johnny waits, not sure how long was long enough. It is probably just something he has to _feel_ but he’s never been very good at that. He stares at the weird, flickering lights of the pumps until he starts to get a headache and specifically does not look at whatever might be entering his car, and then closes the passenger door.

Nothing — nothing in the car looked any different when Johnny got back inside and closed the door behind him, but he was also very carefully not looking. Maybe, for all he knew, a dozen things had moved, and there was now a telltale weight in the seat and the puff of someone else’s breath as they got used to being in the heat of the car. Maybe the breath would fog the windshield and he’d have to turn the defrost back in and pretend it was because he’d left the door open for that minute or two.

He wouldn’t see it, regardless, because he wasn’t going to look to his right at all any more than he could help it, and he certainly wasn’t going to _inspect_ the passenger side of his car by any means.

But he could _feel_ the difference anyway. Could feel the air was ever so slightly more alive than it had been before, like it wanted him to pay attention — like it wanted him alert. Like it wanted him to _look_.

Buckling his seatbelt and checking his mirrors became an event, one that he felt like he was doing wrong the whole time, so specific and pointed was the feeling of being watched. His hands shook and he missed the buckle twice, three times, before hearing the familiar click. The coffee spilled onto his fingers as he wiggled it into the cupholder, burning his finger in a deep pink swath.

When he pulled out of the gas station it was slow and precise, a little bit because of the snow, but more so because it felt a little like he was carrying volatile cargo. Careful like if he hit a pothole, even if he wasn’t actually able to discern where potholes might be in the snowy road, his life might end.

It was certainly not more relaxing to have something (someone?) in the car with him, but that hadn’t really been the point. More relaxing and _safer_ were not the same thing, Johnny was smart enough to know that.

And then there was the drive.

The road was just as bad as it had been before he’d pulled into the gas station. Worse, possibly, but maybe it was just because he felt as though he’d lost his footing — which was as strange a feeling to feel in a car as any.

The first mile passed slowly and with one slide sideways that sent Johnny’s heart into his throat, gravel from the side of the road crunching under his tires by the time he was able to find traction again.

He’d resolved, at the gas station, to not grip the wheel so tightly, but it was much harder to talk himself out of, in the moment, holding onto it as though his life depended on it — knuckles white, muscles tensed, breath held on accident as though one wrong move might kill him.

He knew, logically, that if something had gotten into his car at his request, that he was _probably_ fine, but knowing that and actually getting himself to trust it were two different things entirely.

Every noise he heard at all, made his stomach churn — every flicker of movement put him further on edge. Was that something moving at the edge of his vision? Was that the sound of something reaching for the wheel to hurl the car into a ditch?

A dull thump sounded against the door and he tried to tell himself that he’d probably kicked up a rock or something — maybe chunk of ice, but it —

He could have sworn that he knew that sound, though.

And there it was again — quiet, just barely there. A dull little thump, like a ball bouncing off of something or an eraser falling to the ground. Johnny swallowed and focused hard on the road like that might stop him from hearing anything. A finger drumming against the handle of the door — that distracted, listless sound. It — 

A shiver ran up his spine and a little bit of extra worry mixed with the dread in his stomach.

Surely a tapping was harmless, but the thought of whatever was in the car with him being able to _do_ enough to tap on the door made him feel sick and shaky. He swallowed hard, lights catching on a drift of snow in the road and all his limbs going numb at once as they tried to hold the wheel steady.

The crunching noise his tires made against the snow sounded like fingernails on a blackboard, but his car didn’t stop and he didn’t go off the road. He —

Johnny wonders if he hadn’t made a terrible mistake in doing this. Sure, he wouldn’t have to stop, but if he died on the way there, he wasn’t sure that he could count that as a win, all things considered.

The tap on the door had become almost rhythmic, a steady _dum, dum, dum_ like someone idly pacing out their time.

Johnny swallows hard. Tries to tell himself that the tapping is probably harmless. If the ghost (spirit? thing?) wanted the tapping to be _threatening_ then surely it would be threatening instead of a barely there distraction. Surely if it wanted him to be scared, it would do something purposeful to make him be scared.

Johnny couldn’t stop himself from being scared anyway; couldn’t stop the panic from climbing up his throat. His grip on the wheel, already more than secure, tightening even more.

Part of him wants to look over, as though that might convince him that the thing was harmless. If he could just _see_ the thing, he couldn’t be scared of it.

But then, maybe that’s what it wants him to think.

A clammy kind of shudder rolls over him. He wants to wrap his arms around himself for some kind of comfort, but he needs both his hands to drive. Especially _here_ where the road has devolved into a series of thick, dirty ruts, as though a series of especially filthy semitrucks or a fleet of muddy tractors had ambled their way through the snow with sheer brute force.

His tire catches on a particularly dense rut and jolts violently to the side before continuing on its way.

He can smell ozone and that clean, terrible snow smell and he wants to cry a little bit, but that also seems like a terrible idea and he —

Johnny takes a deep breath, blinking tears back. He can do this, he _has_ to do this.

The tapping continues and he has a sudden urge to laugh at how — unfazed it feels, that continuous little drum.

Johnny sniffles once and wipes his nose on his sleeve and for a moment, it’s fine — things are fine. A careful resolve settles onto his skin. The tapping is harmless, it doesn’t mean anything, and he’s got to keep driving. He’s _going_ to keep driving.

It’s almost — it might as well be background noise, since the radio hasn’t picked up much of anything for the last ten miles or so. A little constant to keep him awake and focused. It’s still a little disturbing, that he can’t see the thing that’s making the sound, but it — he can’t find it in himself to think that it matters. Not in the grand scheme of things.

He takes another deep breath.

The tapping sound continues and it’s fine and Johnny will be fine, but in telling himself that the sound doesn’t matter, it also seems to cement itself inside his head.

To acknowledge that the sound is there and _probably fine_ only makes him more paranoid and _aware_ of whatever is sharing the car with him. 

Johnny can’t stop himself from fixating on it, the feeling that the thing is both not there and there, that it is both looking at him and cannot be looking at him. That, and he has no idea what the thing looks like or what it might be expecting from him.

His mind conjures up impossible things, with wild, broken limbs and faces with far, far too many teeth. Johnny’s breathing catching his his throat, and it’s — 

He has no way of knowing, not really. That’s the worst part. It feels like there’s nothing he can do to _solve_ it.

His car keeps crunching through the snow, mile markers flashing every so often, but Johnny isn’t paying attention. Can’t make himself pay attention to anything besides the tapping — anything besides _whatever_ might be next to him.

Maybe he could — 

Headlights flash bright in front of him; a car coming in the other way had swerved into his lane.

Heart pounding, he swerved out of the way, hit a thicker piece of slush in the middle of the road and slid for a second. Two. Or maybe it was thirty, time slowing to almost a standstill as Johnny turned into the swerve as best he could, hands clammy, panic wracking his body. 

Ozone hit his nose so strongly he felt like he was gagging on it, then the wheel pulled hard the other way, almost like it had been grabbed by something much, much stronger than him, flinging the car hard back into his lane.

And then he was —

Fine.

Fine and still moving (albeit, much more slowly) down the road.

A relieved little laugh made its way from his throat of its own volition, bubbling and growing until he was laughing so loudly in relief that he could hardly see. He felt — a little like crying more, and a little like panicking, and maybe beneath the laughter he was doing a little bit of both, but the smell of ozone was thick in his nose, and it —

The laughter felt good, too. Even as he was terrified, his heart pumping faster than he was sure it probably should be.

He wasn’t really prone to panic attacks, he liked to think he took things at face value and was able to tackle them well-enough, but he imagined that this must be what one felt like — the terrible awareness of his hands being the only thing controlling this chunk of metal he was in down this dangerous terrain, his heart pounding, pounding, pounding, until he was short on breath. The terrible awareness that his limbs were tensed as hard as they could be, but relaxing them felt completely out of his control.

It — he laughed again and the sound was terrible. A little broken. He was a little too cold, but didn’t dare chance taking a hand off the wheel to turn it up. He was a little uncomfortable, but that didn’t _really_ matter.

Johnny’s white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel didn’t move for the next mile, kept company by the constant little taps against the door — sometimes nearly perfectly spaced like a metronome, and sometimes drumming out a varied, interesting beat.

It kept him awake, it was _keeping_ him awake — and then.

And then there was another noise, quiet at first. So quiet at first that Johnny could pretend that he couldn’t hear it. Could pretend, if he needed to, that it was the wind hitting the shell of the car, even though the snow had long since muffled any sounds besides the terrible wet noise the wheels were making as they ground through the rutted and drifted snow. Or, if he needed to, that the noise was coming from the radio, though he’d been between anywhere with regular radio signal for about an hour, now.

It was soft, the noise, like snow ought to be — and wet, the noise, like this snow was. 

And it — Johnny’s hands clenched on the wheel to stop them from shaking, his knuckles whitening ever so slightly, and his fingers growing colder against the cheap fabric wheel cover. His stomach tightened just a little bit, but he didn’t — he didn’t dare look over. Just set his jaw and stared straight ahead and kept driving.

He wondered if this was the same thing everyone heard before they drove off a cliff. A tired sort of snuffling, somewhere between the quietest sob and mournful humming. It —

Oh, it was humming, actually. As he listened, it became more clear.

The tune was a little lilting thing, something that seemed vaguely familiar, but didn’t really register as anything either. It made Johnny feel almost nostalgic, as though he’d heard it several times before, but a while ago. When he’d been a different person.

“No radio out here, huh?” came the voice, soft and slight and matter-of-fact.

Johnny wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, really, but it had most certainly not been that. He had a sudden, terrible impulse to steer away from the voice but found himself, instead, tightening his grip on the steering wheel, almost as though to remind himself not to do that. A shiver ran down his spine, cold and uncertain.

“No,” Johnny said, trying not to let his voice shake. He didn’t — he didn’t want to let it know how scared he was of it, even if it didn’t _sound_ particularly dangerous.

“Bummer,” it said, and then there was that shifting noise again, like it was getting comfortable, almost. There was a couple minutes pause where Johnny tried to stop from panicking and the spirit — well, it must have ignored him.

“Hell of a storm tonight,” the spirit said.

Johnny heard his sharp bark of laughter before he even registered the line as funny. “Sure is,” he said.

And it — he certainly didn’t feel safe around whatever was in his car, but it was also most definitely keeping him _safer_ than he would be without it, so he found himself relaxing slightly. Felt his heart slow to something close to a normal range, felt the muscles in his arms untense a little. It wasn’t — he _wasn’t_ letting down his guard, not all the way, but he still — he had room to breathe, probably, right?

They drove along in relative silence, the roads bad but not as bad as they could be. He slid into the other lane occasionally, but there was never anyone in the lane; no one came up fast behind him unless there was a passing lane and he didn’t come up quick behind anyone at all.

Johnny felt supremely lucky to have taken this chance, and found himself more curious than scared of the spirit who had caught a ride with him.

He wasn’t going to look.

In the first place, he was almost certain that he couldn’t take his eyes off the road safely for long enough to, but in the second, well — not looking at things they shouldn’t was how people _survived_ out here. Johnny knew well enough to have that kind of common decency with spirits. He wasn’t going to look.

He could see it out of the corner of his eye, though. He wasn’t sure why he’d expected it to be kind of glowy white or maybe gray. As it was, it was just sort of — faded. Like it had been a regular person at one point and been rubbed and smudged so much against reality that it had lost some of its color and some of its vibrance. Like a tee shirt ran through the dryer too many times or a piece of paper left out in the snow.

It wasn’t — well, it _wasn’t_ comforting, but it wasn’t as off-putting as he’d been worried it would be. It was just there, existing, and it didn’t seem inherently terrible just by doing so. If it grabbed the steering wheel again or tried to eat him or something, it would almost certainly be a different story.

It kicked its feet up on the dash. “So where are we going?” That same matter-of-fact voice it had had before. There was something so laid back and boyish about it that it was — well, frankly, hard to be very intimidated by it at all.

He wondered if the persona was something leftover from when it (well, _he_ he supposed) had been human, or if it was something he had cultivated on his own, since. Or maybe he’d never been human at all, and he just looked like it a bit.

Johnny pressed his lips together and slowed carefully around a snowy corner, car just sliding the slightest bit, no car in the other lane. If there was a smug feeling rolling off the entity in his passenger seat, neither of them acknowledged it or the smell of ozone.

He didn’t like to think about what he might have gotten into if the spirit had never been human, so he made himself stop that train of thought immediately. He had more important things to focus on.

“I told you, I’ll take you as far as Marion,” Johnny reminded him.

“Oh, I wasn’t listening,” he said. There was a movement very like a shrug.

Johnny’s eyebrows shot up and if the road had been any less dangerous, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stop himself from staring at him incredulously. “You got in a car with someone without knowing where they were going?”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s so irresponsible!”

“I’m a ghost!”

Johnny frowned. “I don’t know that that’s a _great_ reason for irresponsibility.”

The spirit shrugged again — apparently very nonchalant about this as well. “What am I going to do? Die again?”

Johnny didn’t have an answer for that. He imagined that the answer was _no_ , but he wasn’t the expert here. That answered one of the things he’d been wondering — if the entity in his car with him had ever been alive. Sources pointed to yes, now. He wasn’t sure if that made him more or less scared of him.

But it —

Maybe he shouldn’t have been curious, but he was, and he was never very good at doing what he was supposed to or minding his own business in the grand scheme of things. He could follow directions fine, especially with a reason, but implied niceties usually fell on his purposefully deaf ears.

“How did you — hey, do you have a name?”

“Do I have a name,” came the response, clipped like it had taken an almost playful offense to his question. “Do I have a name — do _you_ have a name?”

Johnny couldn’t help but smile slightly, he certainly could have had much less luck with picking up a rider. He hesitated for a moment. He knew you weren’t supposed to give your names to demons or to fairies, he knew that. He couldn’t remember if it mattered if you gave your name to a ghost. It wasn’t like he used his birth name most of the time or anything, but he was still pretty sure someone could do some damage with something so frequently used.

Maybe he was just bad at making decisions. He swallowed hard. “It’s Johnny.”

“Nice to meet you, Johnny, I’m Mark.”

“Mark,” Johnny repeated. A trick he’d picked up a while ago to try and get names to cling to his brain a bit better. “Mark, how did you —” He cuts himself off, his question from before seems — more callous now, almost. What sort of monster asks someone how they died just after learning their name?

“How did I?” Mark prompts.

“... end up here?” Johnny lands on. It’s more of a middle ground, but it still feels off-key somehow.

“I got in your car and then we’ve been driving very, very slowly for about an hour, now.”

“No, I —” Johnny says with a little laugh. “Like, how did you end up at the gas station?”

“Are you asking me how I died?” Mark asks. There’s no — anger, like Johnny might have expected. In fact, if anything, it’s like his voice has been scrubbed of all emotion. Even his careful nonchalance is gone.

“I — yes,” Johnny confirms. Careful, soft, apologetic. “Sorry,” he murmurs. He keeps his eyes on the road, white knuckle grip on the steering wheel as a gust of wind blows him into the empty other lane. So far, so safe.

Mark doesn’t tell him that the question bothers him, but he also didn’t answer it right away. In fact, there was a moment where he didn’t say anything at all and Johnny wondered if he’d somehow — missed something. If he’d misread the situation and was overstepping terribly.

But then, then there was a little sigh and a shifting against the seats and Mark said, “Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t remember?”

“No.”

“No, I didn’t think so,” Mark said. He sounded — sadder than he had before. More serious, too.

“You don’t have to, you know, tell me if you don’t want to,” Johnny said, scrambling for him to be comfortable. What would an uncomfortable spirit do to him?

“No, it’s —” There was a pause. Johnny squirted a bit more wiper fluid onto the icing-over windshield. “It’s okay, I’m just — I don’t think I’ve told this story before, and it’s a little — well, I die in it, you know?”

“Yeah,” Johnny said quietly, more because he felt like Mark needed a response.

It felt a little strange, to exist inside the quiet, comfortable space of the car while the snowstorm raged on around them, and they slid forward going thirty in a fifty-five, careful but not too cautious. The world in black and white except for the interior shaded red.

Johnny had a terrible instinct to reach over and touch Mark’s hand, or his thigh, maybe, in comfort, but he couldn’t — imagine what that would be like, exactly. Touching a ghost.

“It was probably ten years or so ago, I was twenty. I was just a stupid kid, you know? Doing stupid kid stuff. I was riding in the bed of my friend’s pickup truck, we’d had a little to drink and we were going to the gas station for snacks and then going to a different friend’s, it was — I don’t remember whose idea it was, to take the road around the lake instead of the county roads. I think it was because it was less likely for a cop to be back there? Less likely for us to get caught — but it also takes a lot longer, you know?

“And it — well, my friend and the kid in the passenger seat start to bicker a bit, I don’t think they liked each other very much, the dude was kind of a prick, and he’s egging my friend on, just — oh, man, you should drive faster, it’ll be fun. And he — well, he did, but that road’s pretty windy, you know? And so he’s coming around a corner, and the jackass in the other lane has the dimmest headlights we’ve ever seen, so my friend had to swerve back and I —

“Well, I was always pretty light, you know?” There’s a wry little laugh. Johnny wishes he knew how to comfort a ghost. “Just got tossed out of the bed. Read somewhere later that I died on impact.”

“Impact?” Johnny asked.

There’s a humming noise. Johnny imagines a nod. “Yeah, I’m just unlucky like that, I guess. Hit a boulder pretty hard; neck first or near enough.”

“Yikes.”

“Yikes,” Mark agreed, the smallest amount of humor in his voice.

“Did it hurt?” Johnny asks, eyes on the road. He regrets asking immediately — at how thoughtlessly he did so. Of course it hurt, he _died_ from it.

But Mark doesn’t seem particularly worried about the faux pas. “I mean, yeah, but not for long. It’s — I try not to think about it.”

“Of course,” Johnny says, understanding. And then, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Mark echoes and Johnny can hear the wry smile, the humor in his voice. He so wants to look at the shape this boy is, wants to learn his expressions, to see if the things he’s guessed about him are true and it’s —

Johnny swallows hard and keeps his eyes on the road, the smallest flush rising in his cheeks. He’s an embarrassment, so interested in a ghost.

“Do you do this a lot?” he asks, for something to ask. It sounds too much like _do you come here often_ and if he weren’t so distracted by the shitty road conditions he’d half contemplate crawling under the seat to die.

“Oh, I’ve never done this before,” Mark says. Everything he says is so nonchalant; Johnny knows it has to be an act of some kind. It’s — he’s not scared of Mark anymore, he’s almost certain. Except for a little bit. The feeling he’s feeling is mostly fond, actually, and a little curious.

He’s not sure he could have had better company had he chosen someone alive for this terrible drive.

“This?” Johnny asks.

“Materialized,” Mark says. Johnny imagines playful spirit fingers to emphasize how silly he finds the phrase. “Talked, really.”

“Oh.”

“Someone got me surprisingly nice sushi one time, in this little Wyoming city. That was nice — I couldn’t figure out how to eat it, but still. It was nice. I appreciated it, you know?”

“What were you doing there?” Johnny asks.

“At the sushi restaurant?”

“Riding with someone who was going to the sushi restaurant.”

“Oh, just, gods the afterlife is boring, you know? Anywhere’s better than sitting at a rest stop, anything can show up there — they’re like liminal spaces or something. All that stopping and starting is terrible on the terrestrial space, just chews it right up in a snarl.”

“Is that where you showed up?”

“Mhmm,” Mark says, and it’s — detached. “You know how shitty it is to wake up at a rest stop covered in fuckin’ just like, afterlife grime and shit?”

Johnny lets out a laugh without meaning to. “Wait — afterlife grime?”

“Yes,” Mark affirms, matter-of-fact again. “It’s, like, the grimiest I’ve ever felt, ever. I can’t even explain it.” There’s a pause where Johnny wants very badly to ask him to explain it but does not. “It’s like, if I had somehow become the worst kind of sticky and then rolled in some kind of awful, vaguely sharp dirt.”

“That’s a terrible description,” Johnny says.

“I told you,” Mark says. There’s a laugh, soft and pleasant that Johnny doesn’t have to imagine. “I can’t explain it.”

That was fair.

The road was terrible and continued to be terrible, and he felt himself hitting the rumble strips periodically, tires bouncing and jarring and shaking the entire car and it —

Despite it all he felt surprisingly safe. Despite it all, he found himself smiling anyway — the expression tugging at the corners of his mouth, easy and anticipatory.

"Has anyone told you that you're a terrible driver?" Mark asks, something like bemusement in his voice. "You're lucky you have me here, honestly. What made you think you could do this drive alone?"

"Well, for one," Johnny says, playing at being offended. "I didn't think it was going to snow."

"Didn't you look at the weather forecast?"

"What do you know about weather forecasts?"

"I've only been dead ten years, it's not like I'm some ancient spirit wandering the earth," Mark says, and there's a — feeling. The feeling interacts with Johnny's arm in a way that a playful slap might, but it also just sort of feels — wrong. Cold, for one. Not quite solid, like it passes through him after a small amount of resistance.

"Wait, did you just do something?" Johnny asks. It — he's not sure why it unsettles him the way it does, to think of Mark touching him. "Did you just hit me?"

"Oh," Mark says and it's like he hadn't thought about it really. "Yeah, I guess it was an instinct, you know?" There's a pause, but Johnny waits because he can feel the _something_ that Mark's going to ask. "You could feel it?"

"Yeah — I mean, kind of?"

"What did it feel like?" Mark's words are so — interested. Quiet and reserved with a curiosity he can't suppress, either.

"I — I don't know," Johnny hears himself say. "I wasn't really paying attention, you know? I'm driving, but I could —"

"You could what?"

"Pay attention?" It seems a little silly, but can't help himself from offering.

And it — there's a pause, and then Johnny can feel it again, that too cold feeling like something moving through his arm. It's slower this time, not as forceful, but still glancing like a swat, and the pressure he feels on his skin is fluid, almost. Insubstantial, but with more pressure than he was expecting.

Though, maybe that was his fault, for expecting anything.

The feeling, that feeling that moved through his arm is unlike anything he's ever felt before. It feels a little like _he's_ the thing that's not here. Existing in a way that's _almost_ real, that can _almost_ feel this other piece of everything.

"Jesus that feels weird," Johnny says. He takes a hand off the wheel to feel at the place Mark hit. It's unchanged; he's not sure what he was expecting — something to match the lingering sensation of it being changed, perhaps.

“What’s it feel like?” Mark asks, and the voice is almost — expectant.

“Like — like you’re moving through me, sort of?” Johnny offers, trying to find the words. “Like I’m absorbing you, almost? But that’s not quite it either — it’s —” He presses his lips together as he takes a bend in the road, slow and careful. Tires crunching uncomfortably and catching on ice and gravel, but staying on course nonetheless. He gets a little whiff of ozone and Johnny wonders how much of it is Mark’s doing. Wonders how much effort it’s taking him. “It’s like you’re sliding between my atoms or something, taking up space, it’s _weird_.”

“Weird how?” Mark asks. He’s invested in this, hanging on Johnny’s words. Johnny’s not sure why he likes that so much, but he does.

“It’s like — wrong, but not bad. It’s uncomfortable, but mostly in that it’s strange. It maybe even tickles a little bit? It’s hard to tell.”

Mark’s voice is skeptical. “You’re not sure that it tickles?”

Johnny nods. “Just a little bit.”

There’s a soft laugh, and a pause that’s just long enough for Johnny to wonder if they’re getting close to where they’re going, and then the feeling is in Johnny’s arm again, sinking into him. It’s not a hit this time, there’s no feeling of glancing impact, just that weird sliding feeling like Mark has _plunged_ something into his arm and then into his chest and it’s —

Part of him wants to scramble away and it’s a good thing that that part of him is not the part of him that’s driving because the car would have surely ended up in the ditch. As it is, he kind of bats at Mark with the hand that’s closest to him, swiping at where he thinks Mark might be once, twice, and then there’s that _feeling_ again, like he’s sinking into something that’s also somehow sinking into him.

“Hey, cut that out, I’m driving,” Johnny says, though he doesn’t really mean it.

“Are you, though,” Mark says with a little laugh, though he withdraws his hand.

There’s a beat. A little bit of tense _something_ had crept into the air between them while Johnny wasn’t paying attention. He felt a little like he was holding his breath, but in none of the terrible ways he had when they first started on the trip together.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve touched someone,” Mark says, like he wants to fill the silence.

“Dirty,” Johnny mumbles.

“Hey!”

“You started it!”

Mark makes a sort of spluttering noise that Johnny finds kind of cute and then there’s that feeling again. An electricity brewing in the air, waiting. And then —

“Johnny,” Mark says.

“Yeah?”

Nothing. Nothing for a moment longer and then that feeling again, but much more gentle this time. Like a hand resting lightly at the crook of his elbow. It’s almost — it’s _tender_ and Johnny finds himself wondering at it just a little bit, wanting the pressure to be just a little bit more. 

It’s — it’s strange. It doesn’t feel like a touch. Or at least, it’s not very much like anyone else’s touch has ever been, but it’s also — it’s nice, the way it forces Johnny to focus on the contact. Is it that he can parse out the way each finger presses into his skin, cold and certain, or is it that he wants to be able to.

It’s maybe a strange request, that he wants Mark’s touch to be a little bit _more_.

“What does touching me feel like?” Johnny wonders.

He can picture a shy grin, but it’s — it’s not lost on Johnny that he’s imagining this person beside him. Imagining the intent behind the touch. Imagining the reaction to his questions. He presses his lips together and lets his hands grip a little tighter to the steering wheel. He shouldn’t — he shouldn’t be picturing anything about a spirit, not really, but he can’t help but feel like those rules have gone out the window entirely.

In fact it’s — 

“It just feels like touching someone,” Mark says.

“Your hand goes right through me!” Johnny protests.

“Yeah, that’s what touching someone feels like,” Mark says. Johnny imagines a cheeky little smile and the places he might catch on it. Maybe Mark’s lips are soft and plush and distracting. Maybe his teeth are pretty and straight. Maybe he’s — 

There’s a sign for a rest stop up ahead. Two miles. Johnny needs to make a decision quickly, and so he does, slowing down a little bit more.

“Where are we going?” Mark asks, a little bit of surprise in his voice.

“I want to look at you,” Johnny says. His car is sliding a little as he maneuvers into the turning lane. “Is that okay, am I allowed to look at you?”

“What? Yeah, you can look at me, why wouldn’t you be able to look at me?”

“I —” Johnny starts, the urge to glance over at him incredulously is as strong as it's ever been. “Isn’t that a rule or something, you’re not supposed to look at spirits?”

“I’ve never heard that rule before.”

“Mark!” Johnny can’t tell if he’s messing with him or not, surprised giggle escaping from him.

“What? It’s not like they told me the rules when I got here, I just — suddenly was, you know?”

“I guess that’s fair,” Johnny allows.

They’re both quiet as he pulls into a parking space at the rest stop. It’s empty except for the pair of them, but Johnny’s not surprised. It’s late. They might as well be the only people in the world. It feels a little like they’re the only people in the world.

“You want to look at me?” Mark asks to break the silence. It should probably feel more like flirting than it does. It mostly feels like Mark doesn’t know whether or not to believe him. Or maybe like he’s hopeful.

“Yes,” Johnny says anyway. “Is that okay?”

“I mean —” there’s a pause where he seems to be considering and Johnny looks very carefully ahead only. The snow is still coming down, but it’s easier now. Gentler. Like it had managed to wear itself out along the way or had a change of heart regarding its ferocity. Johnny doesn’t dare wonder what it might be a reaction to. “Yeah,” Mark says. And then, “Please.”

Johnny feels something twist in his stomach, nerves or maybe butterflies, as he turns to look.

There’s nothing sitting beside him.

At least, not really. There’s the shape of something, maybe, if he squints. Smudgy but distinct, like the silhouette of a person through frosted glass. The shape scratches carefully at an eyebrow, probably just as off-put by Johnny looking as Johnny is to look.

And maybe he’s imagining it, but the longer he does look, the closer the shape looks to human. It’s still not quite clear, but where once he would have sworn there was just a _shape_ , a _something_ , it’s now, almost certainly, the careful pout of a mouth or a sharp jut of a cheekbone.

“Oh,” Johnny says, as Mark wiggles into focus, and there’s suddenly just — a boy next to him in his car, knees pulled up against his chest, hair a little bit windswept and messy. He’s cute, is the second thing Johnny thinks, after _oh_. He’s cute with his tentative smile and the little dimple in his cheek, with the way he holds himself like he’s trying not to take it all too seriously, with the way he’s looking at Johnny, a little catlike and so terribly, wonderfully earnest.

“Oh?” Mark asks.

Johnny nods.

There’s a pause where he wonders quietly to himself if either of them are going to be brave enough for this or if he shouldn’t just — turn back. Pull out of the parking lot and back onto the highway and pretend that this never happened.

But it — Johnny thinks that they might regret it.

So he reaches a hand out toward Mark. Mark with his earnest expression and his sharp cheekbones and his careful nonchalance. Mark the spirit sitting next to him in his car. And cups a hand to his cheek.

It feels like nothing and something at once. But more than anything, Johnny’s watching Mark’s expression. The way his anticipation flickers into something soft and hopeful. The way his eyes flutter closed and his cheek presses into Johnny’s hand and it’s —

It’s _soft_ in the best way, Mark’s skin. Like it’s made of all the things Johnny would want skin to feel like if he were in charge of designing skin; smoother, somehow, than he expected, more supple maybe. He drags his thumb along Mark’s cheekbone and revels in the soft little sigh.

“What’s it feel like?” Mark asks.

“I’m not sure,” Johnny says. It’s true. He wants to be able to describe it but isn’t sure where he’d start. He presses just a little bit harder, expecting his hand to sink in, but instead Mark’s face moves calmly in his grasp. “Just feels like you, you know?”

Mark’s eyes snap open. Where all that interest and caution had been, there was now blazing something much brighter.

Maybe one of them leans in first, but it doesn’t feel like it, not really. It’s like they’re both seized with a need to touch, to learn, to taste, and it’s —

Johnny feels his lips brush against Mark’s and it’s like nothing he’s ever felt before. It’s a kiss, certainly, the feel of lips is unmistakable, but it feels like more than that as well. It feels a little like pouring his curiosity into something, like _tasting_ something new for the first time, like —

Well, it’s like nothing and everything. They kiss softly, cautiously once, twice, five times, and then Marks’ tongue (or, what feels like it _must_ be his tongue, at the very least) slides against the seam of his lips and Johnny parts his lips to let him in. And when Mark makes a delighted little moan against his lips, Johnny does his best to catch all of it, to gulp it down.

It feels a little like they’re melting into each other, even as their tongues drag together, even as Johnny hears him make an eager little panting noise into his mouth.

Johnny feels almost dizzy with it. He wants Mark closer, _closer_ , though there’s already not much space between them, save for the console, but there’s not much force he can use on a ghost. He reaches for the fabric of Mark’s sweater and tries to pull him in, to drag them together, but instead his hand passes right through him.

Johnny must make a frustrated little noise at that, because then Mark’s chuckling and pulling back, a hand held carefully to the side of Johnny’s neck, just caressing. The touch feels indescribably nice, teasing and careful, like Mark’s taking extra care to not let his touch fall into Johnny. It’s not something Johnny had ever guessed he might appreciate, but he does.

“What do you want?” Mark asks, and it’s teasing and coy and it makes Johnny realize with a start that he might — he might _like_ him, this ghost he’s gone on a road trip with.

“More,” Johnny manages.

“More — more what?” Mark asks. Even if he hadn’t been able to see Mark smiling, Johnny would have heard it.

“Come over here?” Johnny asks.

“More what?” Mark asks again, stubborn.

“More of you.” And it’s — Johnny can’t help himself from smiling, embarrassed, but it’s not _untrue_ and it feels nice to say, even if it is sort of cheesy.

“Well, why didn’t you say so,” Mark says.

There’s _movement_ and something pushing Johnny back into his seat, and then there’s Mark in his lap, a leg to either side of Johnny’s hips, looking particularly smug. The weight of him isn’t enough, even for how slight he is, and shouldn’t _really_ fit there, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. Johnny notices that he’s pretty up close, too, a pair of little moles on his cheek that Johnny hadn’t noticed in the low-light.

There’s a moment where Johnny’s not sure where to put his hands, each hovering over a thigh before settling to hook at his waist. Maybe it’s a little hot that his hands nearly encircle his entire waist. And then Mark’s kissing him again, careful but earnest, and that feeling of melting into each other is back with avengence.

Johnny holds on as tightly as he dares, which isn’t very. The careful touches make everything seem more tender, and he finds himself panting just a little, like he can’t catch his breath. Mark kisses like it’s serious business, tilting Johnny’s chin up and tugging on his lips, and it’s good, it’s so good, but it’s also both more than he expected and more than he hoped for.

The fabric of Mark’s shirt is strange in that it’s ghostly, but nothing like his skin. Johnny pushes beneath it anyways to feel the trim muscles of his waist, to brush his fingers against them and hear the plaintive, but half-embarrassed little whining sounds Mark makes in return.

And then suddenly Mark’s much less solid than he had been just a second ago, like someone flipped a switch.

Johnny laughs. “Where’d you go?”

Mark makes an embarrassed little noise. “Got — distracted,” he says and follows it with a dry little laugh. “I — I’ve never done this before, you know, lots to focus on.”

“Sure,” Johnny says. He doesn’t _know_ that he gets it, but he’d like to think that he does. “Sure, it’s okay. I’ll — I’ll keep my hands to myself, will that help?”

Maybe it’s the glow from the clock in Johnny’s dash or maybe Mark turns a neon shade of red in the time it takes for him to look carefully away and back again. “I mean, it’ll help, but I don’t know that it’ll, like, uh —”

“Fix it?”

“Sure, fix it is a phrase,” Mark quips.

“Is it the correct one?” Johnny asks.

Mark just shakes his head, careful, coy, and leans back down to kiss him. Slower this time, careful. As sweet as anything.

Johnny could melt right into him, could drown in the feeling of Mark’s almost there lips against his, the way his touch teased and guided because it _couldn’t_ do anything more forceful. He nudges closer, noses sinking into each other, and it’s wonderful but also overwhelming a little.

He wants to run his hands through Mark’s hair, he wants to ruck his shirt up and touch the skin of his waist, of his back, he wants, he wants, he _wants_ , but it’s — 

“Fuck,” Johnny says quietly. He feels dizzy, almost, even as he pulls back a little to catch his breath. He wants to rest his forehead against Mark’s but worries about leaning too hard and falling right through him. Their breath (or maybe just his own) has fogged the windows.

A careful glance at the world outside shows that it’s stopped snowing mostly. The rest of the drive will be easy. He wonders if Mark somehow did that, too.

“Not right now,” Mark says with a little laugh. Johnny doesn’t know his expressions well yet but he wants to learn them. This one looks somewhere between cheeky and happily sated.

Both of them sort of linger for a moment, happy but with that loitering energy where they know that they should keep going. Johnny was driving for a reason. He has somewhere to be, people are expecting him. They both know that.

Johnny reaches a hand up to hold Mark’s chin for a second anyway. He can feel it, but it’s almost like he can’t, the way he almost can’t feel his weight in his lap, the way he almost can’t feel him kiss him, and it’s just enough to leave him wanting even though Mark’s right there.

“You’re cute, you know that?” Johnny says.

Mark giggles and swats at his shoulder, already extracting himself from Johnny’s lap. “Shut up.”

“Hey!”

“Hey, what?”

“That’s rude!” Johnny protests.

“I’m note sure why you expected differently from me, I’m a _spirit_ who illegally got in your car.”

“It wasn’t illegal,” Johnny says. He starts the car back up without any preamble. Building up to the thing would feel worse, he thinks. Better to just rip it off like a bandaid. “It was an invitation.”

“Sure,” Mark says, shifting to tuck his feet beneath him in the seat. “An invitation into the world, sure, not to me. I’m illegal.” He giggles softly and glances out the window.

“I just don’t know if that tracks, sorry,” Johnny says, carefully apologetic. His tires threaten to spin for just a moment before his car rolls backwards, slow and smooth. There’s a flickering noise from the radio and a slight scent of ozone, but neither of them mention it.

Johnny navigates them back onto the highway, slow but not too slow, tires crunching over the wet snow.

There’s a few minutes of amicable silence before Johnny asks, “So where’d you learn to kiss like that?”

There’s a cheeky giggle. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I would,” Johnny says. And then, because he can’t help himself. “I want to know everything.”

“Everything?” Mark asks. He sounds like he’s not sure that he should believe him, but his expression is just — delighted anyway.

It’s true, Johnny realizes, despite how cheesy it might have sounded. He likes Mark, but more than that he’s _interested_ in him. He’s never met anyone like him before.

“Maybe not everything,” Johnny allows, thinking it over. “If you somehow have a photographic memory, you can probably leave some stuff out. Meals where you made instant ramen or like, a hot pocket or something, I don’t know that I need to know about those. Math homework? Not that interesting, maybe leave that part out.”

There’s laughter from the passenger seat, and it feels _good_ to glance over at Mark tucked there, picking at a rip in his jeans. It feels a little like he belongs there, though it’s far too soon to say it.

And it’s — 

They drive the last piece together, quipping back and forth. Johnny learns that he likes rap music and hates frozen yogurt. Mark learns that Johnny’s always sort of wanted to be a radio host, though he doubts it’ll ever happen.

The drive dwindles to the last five miles and then to the last and Johnny’s almost sorry to see it go. Part of him debates just — continuing. Stretching the drive out as long as he can, pretending that he’s made a wrong turn somewhere despite having made the drive a dozen times before.

The rest of him doesn’t think Mark will buy it, or is too tired for schemes, especially as the clock flicks to 3 in the morning. Johnny stifles a yawn in his hand and Mark teases him quietly.

When he pulls into the nearly empty parking lot of the Japanese place and it’s — it’s a little like they’re meeting for the first time, the way Johnny asks if he should get him some egg rolls or something, and then comes out with the dumplings Mark asks for.

It’s cold, lingering outside of the car together, but it’s obviously that neither of them want it to be over. At least, Johnny hopes it’s as obvious to him as it is on the way Mark’s scuffing his shoes into the snow and twisting the cuffs of his sweater around his hands. He’s only barely visible in the open air, beneath the ambient glow of the lampposts.

“So, I guess this is goodbye,” Mark says eventually, taking a little half-step closer to close the gap between them.

“I guess so,” Johnny says. It’s — because it has to be, right? This is where they agreed Johnny would bring him. It’s Mark, but it’s still — he’s a ghost. Those are the rules.

Johnny leans down to kiss him, because it’s goodbye. It certainly feels like goodbye.

The kiss is slow and sweet with Johnny leaning down a little and Mark reaches up to tangle his fingers in the hair at the nape of Johnny’s neck and hold him there, close and tender. And sad, it’s sad, too.

It’s — it feels like a waste, almost. That they have to part ways, but Johnny’s not sure what other choice they have and is even less sure how he’d go about asking. He’s — 

“So, what are you doing after this?” Mark asks, looking away, across the parking lot. Maybe eye-contact is hard for ghosts - or maybe it’s just hard for Mark.

“Are you asking me out on a date?” Johnny quips.

“No,” Mark protests, laughing slightly. “I’m just — you know, wondering if I can come with you.”

“Come with me?” Johnny asks.

“Yes.”

“Come with me where?”

Mark’s silhouette shrugs, like it doesn’t much matter. He looks slightly uncomfortable, but determined. Johnny’s endeared. “You know,” he says. “Wherever you’re going.”

“Yeah?” Johnny asks.

“I just want to be where you are,” Mark says, and before Johnny can say anything else or comment on how cheesy he’s being, he continues in a rush. “It’s got to be more interesting than trying to hitch a ride back to the gas station or figuring out how to finagle more dumplings on my own, you know?”

“Okay,” Johnny says. Mark catches his eye, and the smile he gets in return is soft and coy, but incredibly pleased nonetheless. Johnny’s fond. “Okay, you can come with me.”

“Good,” Mark says, decision made. He moves back towards the car, but then waits for Johnny to open the door for him. Johnny will have to ask about that sometime.

“Do you think we’re somewhere we can find a radio station?” Mark quips as he wiggles around in the passenger seat to try and get comfortable.

“I think probably.”

“That’s not country?”

“Oh, that’s not country, almost definitely not.”

“God dammit,” Mark says with a little laugh. He starts fiddling with the radio anyway.

Johnny pulls out of the parking lot, happier than he figures he’s been in awhile.


End file.
